Amazon: Remote Work is Over. Get Back to the Office

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In the early days of the pandemic when the government was busy shutting everything down and crashing the economy in the process, some companies which were able to move toward new models of work began offering employees the option of working from home. One of the early adopters of this model was Amazon, where workers rapidly shifted to a remote work model for nearly all positions. It’s difficult to say when this shift became “the new normal,” but the change was dramatic. Amazon saw a very large surge in online shopping during that time, driving up profits at a time when many other companies were withering on the vine. In 2023 after the pandemic had largely receded, Amazon decided on a compromise and offered workers the option of working three days per week in the office and two days from home. (Some workers protested the change even then.) But now the company has determined that the experiment isn’t viable over the long run. Beginning on January 2, 2025, all Amazon employees will be told to return to full-time work at the office, but not all of their workers are happy about it. (Associated Press)

Amazon is reverting to its pre-pandemic policy and will require corporate employees to be in the office five days a week starting next year, CEO Andy Jassy said Monday.

Jassy said in a message shared with employees that the company’s leadership had been thinking in recent months about how to better “invent, collaborate and be connected enough to each other” to deliver the best results for customers and the business.

The company decided that bringing employees back into Amazon offices five days a week instead of the three currently required was a way to address that issue, the CEO said.

CEO Andy Jassy is clearly aware that there is still something of a new corporate culture that has taken root at the company. Many supervisors are overseeing teams where the employees do not want to return to the office full-time. Jassy issued a less-than-subtle threat to these objectors, saying that things are “probably not going to work out” for those who refuse to comply. 

In the early days of the pandemic, most of us simply accepted the idea that working from home would have to be an option because we didn’t know any better at the time. After all, keeping your job and drawing a paycheck in that fashion was still preferable to having the entire operation shut down. But as remote work slowly became the new normal, some of us could already see problems coming like the headlamp of an oncoming train. Remote work obviously brings with it potential advantages, particularly for those experiencing mobility or childcare issues. What’s not to like, right?

The problem is that remote work isn’t equally advantageous – particularly for employers – for all jobs, nor is it an equally good fit for all workers. Personally, I’ve been working from home exclusively for the past fifteen years and even did a few stints on such assignments before that. Our entire team here at Hot Air works remotely from locations across the country and it’s a great work model for this sort of collaborative team. We have a home office located outside of Washington but I’ve only been there a handful of times and I haven’t visited once since the pandemic began. 

Some jobs requiring physical interaction obviously can’t be done remotely, but even those where such collaboration is possible won’t be the best fit for the employer in all cases. Workers can list many advantages to working from home full time, but that requires a particular personality type, specifically people who are self-motivated and can organize their own schedules without anyone physically supervising their efforts. Where it works, it’s a wonderful option. But the point is that it doesn’t work everywhere. As noted above, Amazon saw a large surge in business during the early, work-from-home days of the pandemic, but that’s because most of the nation was suddenly thrust into a situation where home delivery of goods and services ordered online was the new way of meeting people’s daily needs. Now, with more people heading back out to shop locally, that advantage for Amazon has disappeared. 

It will be interesting to see how Andy Jassy navigates this particular maze. He’s going to need to return to an in-office work model to keep his company’s profits as high as possible. The protesting employees will eventually need to accept the fact that working from home will no longer be an option or they will have to seek new employment. The transition back to the “old normal” likely will not be easy or rapid.